


Like Yellow Does On Blue

by emperors_girl



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:22:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emperors_girl/pseuds/emperors_girl
Summary: Hank doesn’t care about girls, but there are certain boys he wouldn’t turn down. But those boys apparently want someone cool, someone with experience. Not a virgin with a 4.0.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy/Alex Summers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 63





	Like Yellow Does On Blue

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t forgotten about the Raven&Loki fic, just taking a break before I try to work on that.
> 
> I’m taking inspiration from that Taylor Swift music video. You know the one.
> 
> Despite the title, this incarnation of Hank is non-furred.

On the first day of Hank’s senior year of high school, Charles gives him a car. 

“It has great safety ratings,” he says, handing over the keys. “And very fast. I thought you’d appreciate both of those things.”

And Hank does, but…

“It’s blue.”

“Yes,” Charles agrees. “Blue is very cool right now.”

“Don’t say ‘cool,’” Raven tells him, brushing past her brother with a kiss on his cheek. “You’re too old to make it work. Anyway, why don’t I get a car?”

“I gave you a car last year when you graduated,” Charles reminds her, wiping her lipstick off his face. “You totaled it.”

That had been a scary night, Hank recalls. Raven hadn't come home on time and she hadn’t been answering her phone, and when Hank turned on the police scanner he’d heard about a wreck on route 5. He’d of course thought the worst and Charles has picked up on his thoughts right away, so they were both in a huge panic by the time Raven called them from the hospital. 

Luckily no one had been hurt badly, but Hank could do without another incident like that. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” Raven says, hands on her hips. ”Azazel grabbed my tit!”

Charles’s expression softens. “Yes darling, I know. And I was ready to make him think he was a kitten for the rest of his life, but you decided to handle it on your own.”

Raven smiles in a self-satisfied way that Hank doesn’t want to think about. Whatever she did to Azazel for making her wreck her car had to have been worse than living his life as a kitten, and Hank gets squeamish about that kind of thing. 

“So since it wasn’t my fault,” Raven presses, “I should get a new car!”

“No one is saying you can’t have a new car,” Charles argues. “But I’m not paying for it if there’s a chance any of your tit-grabbing boyfriends will be riding in it.”

“You’re slut-shaming,” Raven says hotly, “and you have no right!”

“I’m doing no such thing,” Charles protests. “I’m no hypocrite. But when I have liaisons in the car, I do it while parked!”

“Well excuse me for being _bad touched_ in a moving vehicle!” Raven all but screams. 

From directly behind Hank, a husky voice says, “Every time I think they can’t be any more shameless, they prove me wrong.”

Hank shivers and turns around to see Alex standing there, watching the scene play out. His hair is freshly cut and he’s wearing his varsity jacket, hockey bag slung over his shoulder. He looks really good. If Alex offered, Hank would definitely have a _liaison_ with him in a moving vehicle. 

But that’s stupid. Alex would never be interested in a nerd like Hank.

He shakes his head to snap himself out of it.

“It’s exposure,” he says. “We just spent the weekend having family time. They always fight more when they’ve been together too long.”

Alex makes a face like the idea of family time pains him. 

“Is she going back to college or what?”

Hank shrugs. Raven doesn’t talk to him about her plans, and every time Charles has tried to corner her on the subject, she’s been mysteriously late to some other vague but important event. 

Alex huffs a laugh. 

“Let me guess: you’re too scared to ask.”

“That’s accurate,” Hank admits. Raven scares him and he’s not ashamed to say so. 

He’s trying to think of a cool way to invite Alex to ride with him to school, but Alex saves him the trouble.

“Well,” he says, “we gonna test out this sweet ride or what?”

“Sure,” Hank says, and waits until Alex’s back is turned to smile. 

Charles breaks off his argument with Raven to call, “Have a good last first day, boys!”

Alex gives him a jaunty salute and swings his bag into the back seat of the car. Hank climbs into the driver’s side and adjusts the seat and mirror. Charles was the last one to drive it and he’s about half a foot shorter than Hank.

“Not bad,” Alex says, inspecting the console. “Bluetooth and everything. And it’s got that new car smell.”

It does and it’s making Hank’s nose wrinkle. He rolls down all the windows even though it’s eight in the morning and still chilly. 

“Now we’re talking,” Alex says, letting his arm hang out the window and relaxing back into the seat. He looks very at home in this car already, but maybe it’s just his natural swagger.

Hank starts the car and pulls away from the curb. In the rearview mirror, he can still see Charles and Raven arguing.

XXXXX

Armando is loitering in the school parking lot when they pull in, apparently waiting for Alex. He makes an appreciative whistling noise and calls out, “Nice wheels, McCoy!”

“Thanks,” Hank calls back. 

He parks very carefully within the lines and cuts the power. He waits for Alex to get his bag and climb out, then gets out and locks the door.

“Present from the old man?” Armando asks, coming close to inspect the car.

“He’s hardly old,” Hank says loyally. “But yes.”

“I’ll tell you, man,” Armando says, running one hand along the roof, “I’m jealous. You’re gonna have so many girls trying to get a ride in this thing. And I do mean _ride_.

Alex snorts. “Like he’d know what to do with them.”

That’s not inaccurate, but it still stings. Hank doesn’t care about girls, but there are certain boys he wouldn’t turn down. But those boys apparently want someone cool, someone with experience. Not a virgin with a 4.0.

Hank turns to go, but Alex says, “Hey wait!”

Hank, because he is a doormat, turns back to look at him. 

“Can I have a ride home after practice?”

Hank nods, and then leaves quickly before anyone else can make fun of him.

XXXXX

Before his parents died, the plan had been for Hank to skip middle school and go straight from fifth grade to tenth. They would have fast-tracked him even sooner than that, but the school had refused because they didn’t think he was mature enough.

Then there was the accident and Charles adopted him. Charles, who had been fast-tracked himself, had refused to let Hank skip any grades at all, insisting that he needed the social interaction more than he needed to get a jump-start on college. 

If Charles had foreseen what a social outcast Hank’s turn out to be, he might not have bothered. 

As it is, Hank hasn’t taken any core classes with his peers in several years. Instead, he either does dual enrollment college courses in the computer lab, or works on his senior project in the mechanics lab (a storage closet that the school refurbished with money donated by one Charles Xavier). 

Hank’s senior project is, if he says so himself, very cool. It’s a helmet designed to amplify brain waves, which would have obvious psionic applications. He’d had the idea for it early last year when Charles had been complaining about the headache long-distance telepathic communication gave him. Raven had made a joke about calling collect, and then suddenly inspiration struck! 

The only problem is… the helmet doesn’t work, and Hank’s not sure why. The designs had seemed foolproof when he put it together, but something clearly has gone amiss. He’d spent a very frustrating month at the end of last school year trying to troubleshoot. He probably would have kept going on it all summer, except that Charles made him take a break.

A break from this project, that is - not from designing in general. And he was right: Hank had a lot of fun on his summer project (a blueprint for a supersonic jet plane) and now he’s refreshed and ready to get back to the helmet. He has to get this prototype working in the next few months if he wants to take it to the national science fair next spring. 

But that’s still plenty of time. No need to panic yet.

XXXXX

Hank loses track of time and ends up a few minutes late for lunch. Which isn’t ideal, because by the time he goes through the lunch line, there aren’t any empty tables left for him to hide out at.

He sees Alex from the corner of his eye, waving a hand to get Hank’s attention. Hank is still a little miffed about this morning, but he goes over anyway.

Alex is sitting with Armando, Sean Cassidy, and Angel, all of whom are leaps and bounds cooler than Hank.

“Hey,” Alex says, and smiles at him in a way that always makes Hank’s palms sweaty. He puts his tray quickly down before he can spill anything.

“Didn’t think you were coming,” Alex says.

“I got caught up in the machine lab,” Hank admits.

“Typical,” Alex says, rolling his eyes. 

Then he says, “I got you something,” and pulls out a small, ugly rock.

Hank takes it and inspects it closely. It looks like a rainbow may have thrown up on it. 

“It’s agate, I think,” Alex says. “I found it when Scott and I went hiking this summer. I thought maybe it’d spruce up the lab.”

The timing of this gift feels suspiciously like an apology, but Hank doesn’t mind. 

“Thanks,” he says, and puts the rock on the table in front of him.

Angels squints hard at it.

“Alex,” she says after a minute. “I have to tell you something: that is the ugliest rock I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Everyone laughs except Alex and Hank. 

Alex says, “You’re just jealous that you didn’t find anything cool this summer.”

“I found myself a boyfriend,” Angels shoots back. “Which is more than I can say for any of you losers.”

Armando makes some noises about being interested in girls, actually, and Sean just shrugs philosophically. 

Hank hopes his face isn’t giving anything away. It’s not that they don’t know he’s gay, but he’s never come out and said it to anyone. Not even himself.

Alex, with his nose in the air, says, “I could have a boyfriend if I wanted. Yours, even.”

Angel laughs, challenge accepted. 

“You’re on, Sparky,” she says. “I will literally give you one hundred dollars if you get my boyfriend to sleep with you.”

“One hundred dollars and a blowjob,” Alex negotiates, but Angel gives him a narrow look and he holds up his hands in defeat. “Fine. Just the hundred.”

They shake on it, and Hank finally takes a bite of his sandwich. It tastes like cardboard.

XXXXX

After lunch, Hank has home economics, where he gets paired with Alex for the upcoming unit on baking. Hank would be annoyed about this, but he learned years ago that there’s no point in being annoyed at Alex.

“I don’t know about this,” Alex says, looking at the syllabus. “Cakes and pies, sure, but an oral research project on ethnic baking? I don’t know a single person who bakes, let alone who bakes something that could be considered ethnic.”

“I can ask Erik,” Hank offers. “He doesn’t exactly celebrate the holy days, but he can probably give us a recipe to try.”

“Where’s he been, anyway?” Alex asks, flipping the syllabus over to look at the next unit: soups and stews. “His car’s been gone a while.”

“In Italy getting material for the new book,” Hank says. “Jews in the Roman Empire, I think.”

Erik and Charles are both writers, albeit in different fields; their shared office is where note cards and reference books go to die.

“Maybe he can bring us back an Italian recipe,” Alex says absently. Then: “Gross, we have to make borscht?!”

“Enough chitchat,” Ms. Downing says loudly. “You need to turn in your shopping list for next week’s recipe before the end of class!”

“You have a pen I can borrow?” Alex asks.

Hank hands one over, knowing he’ll never see it again. Alex is a consummate pen thief. He also has a habit of chewing on them, which is both gross and somehow attractive.

Sure enough, the pen is barely in Alex’s hand before he puts the capped back in his mouth. 

Hank looks away quickly, stomach clenching.

“We need flour,” he says, scanning the recipe, “and baking powder.”

Alex obediently starts to make a list.

XXXXX

After school, Hank does tutoring in the library. Since it’s only the first day back, there obviously isn’t anyone in need of his services. He instead takes some time to catch up on the latest issue of Scientific American.

When he’s finished, he checks the time. It’s nearly five, which means Alex should be ready to go soon. 

He packs up and makes his way to the rink, where he slips quietly inside and settles in the stand. He’s trying to be stealthy, but he sees Alex glance up at him from his spot on the bench. Then the line changes and Alex clambers over the boards. 

Even Hank, who knows the bare minimum about hockey, knows that Alex is a fantastic forward. He’s not very tall, but he’s a good skater with quick hands, and he’s not afraid to take or make a hit. 

As Hank watches, Alex darts forward and steals the puck from someone on other side with a poke check, then breaks away up the ice with it. The goaltender stops his first attempt but Alex gets it past him on the rebound. 

Alex’s line-mates immediately swarm him to pat him on the back, but Alex looks up into the stands at Hank and points a gloved finger at him, like that goal was for Hank alone.

Hank blushes and then feels foolish. It’s not the first time Alex has done that. It doesn’t mean anything. 

He looks away from the scene quickly and fishes in his backpack for his binder. He spends the rest of practice re-reading the syllabi for his college courses. This semester he’s taking physics, applied mathematics, and computer science. 

It’s a considerable win to be able to take three courses each semester this year, because Charles put a hard limit on two last year. If all goes according to plan, Hank will have ten courses to transfer in when he goes to college, which is well under the limit allowed by Harvard. 

If Harvard accepts him, that is, but he’s not very worried about it. He has other, more immediate worries of the high school variety. 

There’s the thump of a heavy footstep behind Hank and he turns to see Alex, hair freshly washed and school bag on his shoulder. 

“Hey Bozo,” he says, dropping down in the seat next to Hank and immediately leaning against him. It doesn’t mean anything, all this casual touching; Alex is probably tired from practice. 

“You see my goal?” Alex asks.

“I have eyes,” Hank tells him. 

Alex huffs a laugh. 

“Yeah, but they’re trapped behind those dorky glasses.”

“If I took them off, I definitely wouldn’t be able to see any goals you score,” Hank reminds him. “Or anything else, for that matter.”

“Contacts,” Alex starts, but Hank shakes his head. 

They’ve had this argument many times before. It’s not that Hank is opposed to the idea of contacts, but he likes his glasses. They feel like a protective barrier between him and the rest of the world. He feels safe in them. 

“Fine,” Alex says, rocking back in his seat, away from Hank, who immediately misses the warmth; these rinks are always so cold by necessity. “But don’t blame me when you kiss someone and get all fogged up.”

That doesn’t seem entirely likely, but Hank doesn’t want to pursue the line of conversation. He and Alex both know that Hank has only ever kissed one person in his life, and that was last year after prom. 

Alex had convinced Hank to do shots with him and they’d both been pretty drunk, hanging out in Sean Cassidy’s backyard behind the shed while music blared from inside the house. Alex had lost his tuxedo jacket somewhere, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to show off his bare arms. He’d looked so good, and Hank had some sort of moment of insanity where he’d leaned forward and kissed him.

For about ten seconds, it had been his smartest choice ever. Then Alex suddenly shoved Hank away, dropped to his knees and vomited into the bushes. 

Alex had kept apologizing over and over again even as Hank helped him into the house and up to one of the spare rooms, where he’d made him drink a full glass of water. Then Alex fell asleep and Hank went to cry in the bathroom, and the next morning they woke up and silently agreed to never talk about it again. 

That was almost four months ago, but nothing seems to have changed between them. They were never really friends, just neighbors who became friendly through sheer proximity. 

Hank doesn’t bother wishing it could be more between them. That would be a waste of time.


End file.
